Many desert island castaways are musician-composers, but perhaps UK-born Tim Garland's credit should be reversed: even before he was a serious saxophone player, he studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

But no matter in which order you apply the attributes, Tim was more than enough of a saxophone player at a young age to play in the John Dankworth band, and to share the front line with fellow tenorist Ronnie Scott in the latter's quintet. Since then, Tim has played jazz with a Who's Who of luminaries on the UK scene (e.g., Bill Bruford's Eathworks, John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Pete King) and also in the USA, where he's a member of the Storms/Nocturnes trio with Joe Locke and Geoffrey Keezer.

Perhaps Tim's most notable collaboration has been, and continues to be, with Chick Corea. Tim was a member of Chick's "Origin", and is currently touring with Chick's "The Vigil". In 2009, Tim won a Grammy for his orchestration of "The New Crystal Silence" for Chick and Gary Burton.

For a decade or so, Tim was a member of Lammas (described on his website by fellow member Don Paterson as playing "a kind of Euro-jazz, inflected with the Celtic folk music of the British Isles; which doesn’t sound a very radical idea these days, but it was in 1989"). He's also been a member of Acoustic Triangle, and currently leads another trio, Lighthouse. His recordings include "Enter the Fire" and "Made by Walking".

But for Tim, who believes that the jazz and classical worlds are not as far apart as often claimed, composition is never far away. He has performed his own saxophone concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and is soon to release "Songs to the North Sky" with the strings of the Northern Sinfonia.